I found that I was over-warm and lowered the temperature to one in which, I was sure, Jim would not be uncomfortable. Then I changed, for I was still quite warm and my underlayer was irritating my skin to an unprecedented degree. Sehlat fur is warm enough for cold winter nights, able to be taken without harming the animal, and is therefore readily available, acceptable, and inexpensive. It is also a minor irritant. I was in no mood to deal with itchy clothing; I was restless and my skin was oversensitive.
I prepared tea, and put on a shirt my mother had given me. It was a Terran import, of some cloth with a heavy, soft, sleek texture. In my current state, it was sufficiently warm. It was also a regrettably bright shade of blood green.
"I was wondering if you had any other clothes," was all Jim said when he came in with the chess set. He himself was all in blue. I had seen the faded, tough pants before, but not the soft, vivid shirt, his bright hair curling to the collar. I was irresistibly reminded of an oasis. Jim could be no lesser oasis than Pelasht. Pelasht, yes, with the solid stone Academy looming behind. His eyes were less clearly defined than I remembered them; the shadowed blurriness jumped out at me as clearly as the fact that his cheekbones, unlike those of the other children, had grown sharper instead of more padded.
I poured a cup of tea, and handed it to him. "My water and all the moisture of my House is thine."
"Vulcan tea?" he asked, interested, putting down the chess set. "What's it made from, shaved cactus?"
"Vulcan does have leaf-bearing plants," I informed him, although he was correct.
"Really? But--"
I silenced him by sipping my tea.
"Oh. Thanks." He warmed his hands on it. He sniffed appreciatively, and made a low, approving noise. He did not drink. I declined to be offended. Although he had demonstrated some knowledge of basic Vulcan greeting rituals, this custom was more obscure.
We set up the board and began to play. For the first part of the game, I stared fixedly at the board, devoting my entire attention to it. He was a highly unpredictable opponent, now that we were both paying attention. As I captured a rook, though, I glanced up.
He was looking at me as though he had been doing so for some time, and his dreamy expression was belied by the thoughtful narrowness of his eyes. I was instantly transfixed. Why did he not study the board? What could be gained by looking at me?
He smiled slowly, and reached out lazily to capture my last knight. His smile widened a little, although his eyes remained shuttered. I suddenly realized that he still had both of his knights, and that one of them was in a very good position. I raised my eyebrow defiantly, and from then on made sure to glance at him often.
He, for his part, seemed to be making sure to glance at the board every so often; his main focus was divided between my eyes and fingers. His game did not seem to suffer by it. Sometimes he would bring the cup to his nose, breathe deeply, close his eyes, and not drink.
"You are doing that deliberately," I accused, despite the fact that Vulcans do not blurt, the seventh time he refrained from drinking.
"Doing what?" he asked innocently, widening his eyes in a most suspicious manner.
As I had no answer, I settled for, "Being distracting."
The sleepy smile suddenly exploded into brilliance. "Do you find me distracting, Spock?"
"That is not what I said," I snapped. "Why do you keep looking at me?"
"Anything I could say at this point would embarrass you," he said smugly, sniffing his tea.
"Vulcans are not subject to embarrassment," I growled, leaning my head forward to cover my hot ears with wings of hair.
"If you say so," he commented, more smugly yet. Fixing his eyes on mine with an utterly intolerable expression of self-satisfaction, he put my queen in jeopardy.
The move had clearly been made on impulse, purely to annoy me, not as a part of some overarching strategy. I blocked it easily, and resolved to stop looking at him. Only a few moves after I implemented this resolution, however, my game began to suffer, and I had to break it.
He was back to looking dreamy again. I decided that this was an even more dangerous expression than the impish one, and I resolved to do something about it. I reached for my king.
His hand shot out and covered mine. I looked back up at him, startled and shocked, knowing I should move my hand but unwilling to do so. He wore an expression of absolute incredulity, tempered slightly with disappointment. "You're conceding?"
"I am not," I replied, indignant. "I am moving my king."
His cool fingers slowly withdrew, sweeping reluctantly over the back of my hand. "Oh," he said. "Right. I should have seen that, sorry. Stupid of me. Carry on, by all means."
"By any and all means," I returned. He grinned, squeezed what he was still touching of my hand with the tips of his fingertips, and released me. I was less pleased at the release than I ought to have been.
We returned to the game. "Tell me," I inquired, "where did you learn to play chess?"
"I was taught to play checkers when I was little," he said absently. "I got bored with it later and pestered Uncle Rob till he taught me how to play chess. This is starting to get old, too; you're the only decent opponent I've had in years."
"On Vulcan," I submitted, "chess was considered Earth's primary export--"
"Better than chocolate?" he interrupted, with wide eyes and a smirk.
"Chocolate," I returned gravely, "is black market. Along with a number of other foodstuffs which, since I am considered too young to know about them, I could not possibly tell you about."
"Gotcha," he said with a wink, sacrificing a bishop to take my queen.
"That was a highly irritating move." I lifted the bishop with some satisfaction.
"Thank you. You were saying?"
"That chess was converted to a three-dimensional board five point four years ago."
He sat bolt upright, lost the dreamy look, set his rook down several squares from where, I was sure, he had intended it to go, and breathed, "Oh, wow..."
I moved hastily.
He glanced at the board and made a face at me, but said only, "Sneaky."
"You deserved it," I noted.
"Probably," he agreed. "Is it true?"
"Naturally. Vulcans do not lie."
"Not even to win at chess?"
"It is not widely considered a psychological game."
He stared at me, and his hand dropped in another unfortunate location. This time, unfortunately, he kept his fingers firmly clamped around the rook. "You're kidding."
"I am not."
"That explains a few things."
"Such as?"
"Such as why your fa--uh, why this other Vulcan I played with beat the computer, which I can't do, but lost to me within five minutes."
Taking the knowledge to me and holding it, I volunteered, "It also might explain why you cannot beat the computer."
"Very likely," he said, then looked at the board and frowned. "Uh, Spock? Problem."
"Where?" I inquired, my knight suspended in the air.
"Here," he said, pointing, "if you move where I think you're going to have to move." He scowled horribly at me, but it twisted at the end into a rueful smile. "You and your little booby-traps. See?"
I did not, and I wished to put my hand down.
"You move there, and it's stalemate in six."
I stared at him blankly. I stared at the board, more blankly yet. There seemed to be a cold breeze along my spine, which only served to emphasize the heat of the rest of my body. I looked back up at him. He was in earnest. "You see that far ahead."
"It's a knack. But see?" He pointed, then gave up and started moving the pieces. "If you move there, I'll have to move here, you'd be out of your mind not to move there, then it'll go like this, and the only way I'll be able to keep from losing is to go like that, to which you'd have to go either here or there, either of which leaves me an opening like a barn door, since you started fooling around with your king, and it's bam! Stalemate."
I looked at the new formation, then began returning the pieces to where they had been. "Surely you can extricate yourself."
He closed his eyes, and frowned thoughtfully. "No, I don't think so. See, with your bishops there, and my queen all the way over there and this in the way?"
"But if this pawn--"
"Yeah, only there's the bishop here--"
"If this--"
"No, because your king--"
"I see, but if the knight--"
"Well, maybe," he said doubtfully, and started playing it out. His eyes, which had been hazel, changed suddenly to an abstracted gold. I blinked. I had never seen such shifting before. On Vulcan, the least static color for eyes was a certain shade of blue which grew paler at night. His alien irises were intriguingly versatile.
"I am here," I pointed out, repossessing my side of the board.
"Uh-huh," he said.
"Are you?"
"Uh-uh." His right hand, now that it was no longer moving the black pieces, was drumming absently at the table. I reached over the board to stop it. As soon as I touched him, he jerked once and stared at me, his eyes shifting again, from gold to green and back in quick succession.
I heard someone say, "Fascinating," and then my body was rising, taking his arm by the elbow and encouraging him to rise.
"Spock?"
I led him over to the bed, where there was better light and a formation of pillows that would allow me to make use of it. I pressed him into the pillows, and brushed his left eye wide with my fingertips that I might look into it. The moment I initiated contact, he jerked again, and gasped. "Your eyes are remarkable," I observed. They were green again, and they were staying that way.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Your eyes. The irises. The color."
"Um... thank you?"
"Quiet." Although I thought otherwise at the time, I was not in control. My reasoning broke down rapidly on later analysis. I had no reason, only a pressing urgency, a languid imperative. I was not sane. Feathering down his sides was not a sane thing, nor was tracing his features. Running my hands through his hair was an act of complete dementia. I could feel the delicate bony ridges of his ribs, smooth sheets of muscle unveiled by extra flesh. I saw my thumb brush gently by the corner of his lips, felt him lean into the movement until I felt his chin pressing against my palm. My fingers, burrowed in his hair, felt completed. Yet it was not I who moved.
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